Exploding, Like Fireworks

Pat Murphy

Description

On the space station known as Moon Talk, engineers and poets work together to prototype and manufacture communications satellites. The founder of the station decided to include poets because they specialize in communicating high-density information in very short bursts.Angel, a 20-year-old robotics engineer, is visiting Moon Talk on a poetry/engineering internship when an accident on the station's hull leaves her paralyzed. Unable to return to Earth where the relentless pull of gravity would kill her, Angel must make the station her home.Though her body is trapped, the poets and engineers who run Moon Talk find a way for Angel's consciousness to escape the confines of the station. The robotics staff jacks Angel first into a robotic unit on the station's hull, and then into a body that can move about the station's interior. She inhabits a robotic probe that prospects among the orbiting rocks of the asteroid belt. But that's just the beginning of Angel's journey.A novelette.

Sujets

• Short story
• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Untreed Reads
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 0001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611874761
• Langue: English

Extrait

Exploding, Like Fireworks
By Pat Murphy

Copyright 2012 by Pat Murphy
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Also by Pat Murphy and Untreed Reads Publishing
A Cartographic Analysis of the Dream State
Bones

http://www.untreedreads.com
Exploding, Like Fireworks
By Pat Murphy
Shadows on the hull-
long shadows, getting longer.
Night is coming fast.
I never saw what hit me.
I was a young woman of 20, visiting Moon Talk, the space station for engineers and poets, when my life changed. I was out on the station’s hull with a couple of friends. I had wanted a chance to see the earth with as little between me and it as possible. Sure, I could look at it on the monitors, but that didn’t seem real. I might as well be earthside, watching it on TV. So I’d convinced Chaz and Joan to go for a stroll on the hull.
We were strolling near a construction area, where remotely controlled units were attaching a dish receiver to the hull. Chaz and Joan were flirting with each other-amusing for them, but not so great as a spectator sport-so I turned off my radio. In my suit, I could hear only the sounds of my own body: the rhythmic pounding of my heart, the hiss of my breath, the distant scraping of my magnetized boots on the metallic hull, constructed of steel mined from an asteroid.
The earth was a crescent in the sky above me-a thin slice of the globe was illuminated by sunlight, the rest was in deep shadow. On the brightly lit crescent, I could just make out a few details through the clouds: the curve of the Chinese coast, the islands of Japan where I’d be going in just a few months. In the darkened portion of the globe, I could see flashes of brilliant white light shining through clouds-lightning storms over Asia.
I was staring up at the earth when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye: a white shape, moving fast. I started to turn toward it. Too slow.
I didn’t see the dish tumbling toward me. Someone-I never asked who-had released the grip of the robot manipulator too soon and then, moving quickly to try to recover from the error, had slammed the pincers into the dish, sending it flying out of control. The safety line had already been removed: in a hurry to finish the job, someone had acted too soon.
The dish caught me just above my left shoulder, striking at neck level and continuing with inexorable momentum to smash me against the hull. The space suit held: it was not ruptured by the impact and its boots still clung firmly to the hull. But my body-soft and malleable flesh-twisted and snapped within the protective suit.
I had been on the night side of the station, shielded from the direct rays of the sun. I didn’t really see shadows getting longer, but the metaphor works.
* * *
I woke from a dream, disoriented and confused. In my dream, I had been watching the earth in the sky, listening to the beating of my own heart. With each heartbeat, the earth had gotten smaller and smaller, receding in the distance, rushing away from me. I remember being terrified-I was so far away from earth and getting farther. How would I ever get back?
I opened my eyes and blinked, trying to make sense of what I saw. I thought to rub my eyes, but I couldn’t seem to find my hands. What I saw was a white ceiling, a mirror set at an angle to reflect my face and my body.
I didn’t look good. I was tethered in a hammock, floating weightless at the center of the station. Wires taped to my temples, a tube in my nose, both eyes blackened, bruises on my face, my arm wired with an IV pump, my chest sheathed in a metal casing. At the edge of the mirror, I could see the reflections of more tubes and wires, could see a moving blip on a screen. The moving blip made a regular beeping sound, in time with my heartbeat. I tried to turn my head to take a better look, but I couldn’t move. I could hear the hum of machines and a rhythmic, raspy sound, like the heavy breathing of someone with a bad cold. My head ached, but they must have anesthetized my arm, because I couldn’t feel the IV pump.
A face floated into view over me. White coat; hair pulled back and tied, to keep it from floating free in zero g. A doctor.
“Angel,” she said softly. “How do you feel?”
I opened my mouth to speak and my lips shaped words, but there was no sound. Then air rushed through my lips and I made a garbled sound.
“You’re on a respirator,” the doctor said. “You can speak but wait for your breath to come.”
I waited while the machine inhaled for me, then exhaled.